Tag Archives: Fiction

Review | The Retribution, Val McDermid

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I first read Val McDermid a few years ago, when I was really into psychological mystery thrillers. I read The Mermaids Singing, and, coming from Alex Delaware and Alan Gregory, found Tony Hill’s story really disquieting. The torture scene disturbed me so much I stayed away from other McDermid books, even though I admired her skill as a writer.

A few months ago, I found a copy of Mermaids at a library book sale, and thought to have another go at it. It was as dark and well-written as I remembered, though I no longer got as freaked out over the torture scene. Frankly, that in itself is disquieting. I blame Lisbeth Salander.

Bright side is that I then felt ready to read The Retribution, latest in the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan series. Retribution brings back Jacko Vance, a serial killer first introduced in Wire in the Blood and, from what I hear, one of Tony Hill’s most evil antagonists. Retribution is very much a series book, building on developments from other books. As a relatively new McDermid reader, I loved reading about deepening relationships and emotional scars from past events without feeling lost, and I can imagine how much richer an experience it would have been for someone who’s followed Tony and Carol through the past dozen or so books.

In Retribution, Jacko Vance breaks out of prison and is out to seek revenge against the people who captured him in the first place. He’s a malevolent and horrific figure, and even without having read Wire, I can understand the depth of Tony’s fear at learning of his escape.

More interesting, however, is that Vance’s break from prison is the catalyst for a story that delves really deeply into Tony Hill’s past and his psyche. Tony is a bit of an anti-hero. He’s so good at psychological profiling because he can really get into the mindset of a psychopath. Much like a broodier version of Dexter Morgan, Tony mostly “acts” at being human, acting much as he observes humans are supposed to act. The line between profiler and psychopath is so delicate in Tony Hill, and I love how Retribution reveals so much about Tony’s past, about his relationship with his cruel mother and about the motherly figure who kept him just this side of human.

We also meet Tony’s mother in Retribution, and I love how formidable a figure she is! I feel bad for Tony having to grow up with such a cold-hearted woman, but she’s definitely a fascinating character. I love the development of Tony and Carol’s relationship in this book. Jacko Vance’s actions threatened not just their romance, but also their friendship, and I was cheering them on all the way.

If you’re a long-time Val McDermid fan, you’ll definitely love Retribution for the way it explores character story arcs. If you’re relatively new to McDermid, Retribution is a good place to jump right into her work; I found it fascinating. Either way, McDermid is definitely a master at crafting an exciting psychological crime mystery/thriller, and Retribution is a gripping read.

Review | A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness

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I read A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness because of this blog review. I enjoyed Ness’s Knife of Never Letting Go, but as I wrote in my comment to that post, I thought of Monster as just a children’s horror story. The jacket cover just said the monster “wanted the truth,” which I thought could mean practically anything. So, while I admired the art, I had no interest in reading it.

Then I find out it’s about a boy  whose mom is dying of cancer and whose dad has another family in a different country. Far from being a simple haunted house (monster-infested house?) story, Monster is about a monster who forces the boy to face the truth of his situation. What is that truth? You’ll have to read the book to find out. But it’s a truth that definitely, painfully, hit home for me.

I was an emotional mess reading Monster, and I mean that in a good way. It was cathartic, and in a way, I almost wished I’d had a monster like Conor’s, who told me such stories. A bit of personal background: my mother died of cancer last year. Conor’s pain, his anger, his denial — his experiences just felt very immediate. To be honest, I don’t know how this book will affect you. I won’t say anything as pat as that we’ve all experience loss in some form or other, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned this year, the experience of loss is never generic. The book jacket calls the story “darkly mischievous and painfully funny.” I didn’t see the humour, but perhaps, in a few years, I will. My point isn’t that the book isn’t funny, but that it’s so intensely personal that I think it will touch each of us differently. That’s not something I can say for many books.

I was immediately struck by Conor’s first encounter with the monster:

Then the monster paused again.

You really aren’t afraid, are you?

“No,” Conor said. “Not of you, anyway.”

Of course not. Conor has something much more horrible to fear, something much more difficult to fight. There’s a focus that comes with tragedy, a loss of anxiety that isn’t so much courage as it is the realization that, when all is said and done, some monsters are really very minor.

The monster says that he will tell Conor three stories, after which Conor must tell him a fourth: the truth about the nightmare that has haunted Conor for months and that scares him much more than this monster could. I loved the monster’s stories. They had a fairy tale quality, but they also touched on specific aspects of Conor’s life. Like Conor, I wanted to control the way the stories went, and like Conor, I was shocked or thrilled or dismayed at the twists. I’m over twice Conor’s age, yet I had very similar reactions to the monster’s tales. Some situations are just too big, too frightening to handle, and the reality that, even in fantasy, we don’t always get what we want, is painful regardless of age.

Monster goes far beyond the monster’s tales. The scenes of Conor’s real life are even more powerful. As he faces bullies, as he shuts himself away from a former friend, as he repeatedly insists his mom will be cured by her treatments — everything is just raw and immediate and all too relatable. Even Conor’s fear of talking about his nightmare struck home. How often do we cling to denial because admitting something might make it true? The scene where the monster, gently yet insistently, forces him to acknowledge the truth… Amazing.

Monster is gut-wrenching, emotional, even painful. It’s also beautiful, tender, and moving. I don’t mean to make it sound like a heavy, depressing book. Nor do I want to sound cheesy, but it is uplifting. Ness never gets maudlin. The writing is masterfully subtle, and therefore connects even more deeply. Whatever your experience with loss, this book will connect with that part of you.

After one of the monster’s stories, Conor demands to know what he was supposed to learn from it.

You think I tell you stories to teach you lessons? the monster said. You think I have come walking out of time and earth itself to teach you a lesson in niceness?

It laughed louder and louder again, until the ground was shaking and it felt like the sky itself might tumble down…

“I don’t understand. Who’s the good guy here?”

There is not always a good guy. Nor is there always a bad one. Most people are somewhere in between.

Conor shook his head. “That’s a terrible story. And a cheat.”

It is a true story, the monster said. Many things that are true feel like a cheat.

Indeed.

Review | 77 Shadow Street, Dean Koontz

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I like haunted house stories. Andrew Pyper’s The Guardians literally kept me up all night, and I identified with Joey Tribbiani when he had to keep Stephen King’s The Shining in the freezer. Still, Dean Koontz’s 77 Shadow Street, about an apartment complex with a history of its inhabitants mysteriously disappearing, mostly left me unmoved. In fairness to Koontz, 77 Shadow Street is a solid, well-written horror/thriller. I haven’t read Koontz in years, and remember only being seriously freaked out by Tick Tock. So I can’t really say how much avid Koontz fans will enjoy 77 Shadow Street.

The books that really creep me out are those where the threat is left intangible. You can sense the malevolence, but you have no idea where it’s coming from, or what its source wants. So when Koontz introduces his antagonist in the first thirty pages as a sinuous “black form,” I was disappointed. The creature is certainly menacing enough, and at parts, downright disgusting, but I was more grossed out than creeped out. We are introduced to the One fairly early, an amorphous evil entity who announces it will kill most of the residents, and presumably as many humans as it can. Scary, yes, but its grandiose tone and generic aim lacked menace for me, more like a cartoon villain’s evil master plan than like Hannibal Lecter’s far more chilling plots.

There are chilling moments, like when a woman tries to call the concierge only to be connected to a telephone operator from the 1930s, which has a Twilight Zone-like inexplicability that I love. There are also scenes where humour enhances the horror, like when the concierge is attacked: “Until now she hadn’t realized that in her right hand she still held the fork with which she had been eating Mausi Anupama’s delicious uttapam. […] She thrust with the fork and stopped her assailant […]” The idea of using a fork to stop a supernatural creature is absurd, yet when it’s the only viable weapon on hand, you can almost cheer when it works.

The potential victims are sympathetic enough, especially the children. I don’t usually like child characters, but Winny’s desire to be a hero is charming. I also really liked the pair of sisters; they added a nice touch of eccentricity and humour. Still, there were so many characters that it got confusing at times, and while I was generally sympathetic for all of them, I didn’t really feel invested in any of them.

The story picks up a bit for me near the end, with characters coming up  with possible scientific explanations. I also liked the story behind the origin of the One, and the moral dilemma it presented some of the characters. I thought the One’s motivation was fairly standard and therefore unexciting, but I did enjoy the twist in the origin story.  Still, overall, 77 Shadow Street didn’t really grab me. To be honest, I might have enjoyed it more as a movie. It would’ve been a gory, entertaining scream-fest and I would’ve left the theatre with no problems turning the light off that night. But as a book, it didn’t even make me scream.